


Confessions

by psychobabblers



Category: DCU, Justice League & Justice League Unlimited (Cartoons)
Genre: First Kiss, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, Light Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-27
Updated: 2018-04-27
Packaged: 2019-04-28 19:22:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14456076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/psychobabblers/pseuds/psychobabblers
Summary: Bruce cares for Clark after he is injured during a mission.





	Confessions

Clark barely remembered any of the fight. He did remember there were a lot of them, wave after wave that continued to crash into them as he and Batman fought. He remembered the final room when they had cornered the warlord and she had loosed her final weapons. She had been wily and desperate and ruthless to the end. Somehow the sheer numbers had pushed Batman and Superman to separate sides. Clark remembered the odd exhaustion that had dragged at his bones even then, before the ones near him parted to allow warriors wielding Kryptonite tipped spears to advance. 

The echo of pain still remained in his aching body so he must have been wounded, and many times at that. He cracked his eyes open and noticed Bruce, cowl off but still in the suit, where he had fallen asleep half kneeling at his side where he lay under a solar lamp. Half dried blood flaked as he shifted. 

Bruce’s eyes shot open. 

“You look terrible,” Clark said, though it was more like a croak. 

“You’re worse,” Bruce retorted, bedside manner as blunt as always. Clark nodded a little to himself, relieved that Bruce had enough energy to snap at him. On the other hand Bruce was intractable enough that he would probably use his dying breath to disagree with Clark. He wanted to smile at that but it hurt too much.

Bruce looked him over critically, lingering at points that were the focal points of pain, his mouth twisted into a harsh line. When he spoke though, his voice was gentle. “Try and sleep Clark.”

Clark closed his eyes obediently, wanting to smooth the frown on Bruce’s face, and drifted. He felt a warm cloth being run down his side. Up and down, up and down, sometimes in a small circle. It was a comforting sensation and he sighed a little. There was a pause and then a hand stroked his hair once. “What are you doing,” he whispered. 

“Shh,” Bruce murmur _ e _ d. “I’m sorry if it hurts.”

“It doesn’t,” Clark tried to say, but he didn’t think his body was working right because nothing he said sounded like it made sense.

“I’m sorry,” Bruce said again, and Clark tried to fight off the yawning darkness to tell him not to be but it overcame him.

The next time he woke Bruce was sitting in a chair reading something off a tablet. His face was bruised and one of his arms was in a splint.

“Hey,” he said. It came out sounding like a croak. 

Bruce was by his side in an instant, tablet abandoned and a cup tipped to his lips so he could drink.

“What happened?” He knew it had been bad when Bruce’s eyes went dark for a second. “How long was I out?”

“Three days,” Bruce said. “I barely got us out of there alive.”

“And the prisoners?”

A fond smile touched Bruce’s lips. “All safe.”

“Are you alright, Bruce?”

Bruce made a dismissive gesture. “I’ll be fine. Nothing I haven’t dealt with before.”

“ _ Bruce.” _

There was a short pause where Clark thought he’d just ignore him. Then Bruce spoke. “There were fragments of kryptonite everywhere in your wounds. I operated for hours to get all the pieces out.”  

Clark felt something twist inside him a little at what Bruce must have gone through, from somehow managing to snatch a victory from that battle, to dragging him back to the ship to picking out every shard of kryptonite. Then something Bruce was saying struck him.

“Sorry,  _ what? _ ” 

“I said,” Bruce said evenly, “This only happened because of a serious lapse in intel. I should’ve caught this before we were in that mess.”

“This wasn’t your fault Bruce,” Clark said, wanting to shake him. 

“As the League’s strategist every lapse in intel is on me,” Bruce retorted.

Clark laughed then, instead of continuing the argument, and enjoyed a rare moment when Bruce was nonplussed.

“Sorry,” Clark said, smiling. “I just remembered that when I first woke up on the solar bed I thought about how you would use your dying breath just to disagree with me.”

Bruce stilled and Clark felt the moment shift into something else all of a sudden. He realized he was holding his breath.

“I wouldn’t,” Bruce said, voice low. He looked up and met Clark’s eyes and there was something there that had always been elusive, except that Clark could read it clearly now. “Clark,” he said and he sounded the way he did in the snatches of memory Clark retained from his healing process. And then Bruce’s lips were on his and he made a muffled sound of shock before he surged up to deepen the kiss. The groan Bruce made then would probably haunt his dreams for the rest of his life, he thought wildly. “I love you,” Bruce whispered against his mouth. He pulled away for a second. “In that fight, when things got bad, when I wasn’t sure if you would make it, I couldn’t bear it if you didn’t know.”

Clark reaches out a hand to brush back a lock of hair that had fallen out of place, as he had never dared to do before. “Bruce,” he said. “I know. You’ve told me before in so many different ways.” Even during the past few days which remained hazy in his memory, the thing that stood out in stark definition was the love Bruce has shown him. It had often humbled him, the depth of caring that Bruce was capable of showing in his own ways. 

“But not this way,” Bruce said stubbornly, though he was smiling that secret smile that only Clark ever got to see. “I love you.”

And Clark hauled him in for another kiss, because he had spent all his life up until now without kissing Bruce Wayne, and damned if he was going to be wasting another second.


End file.
